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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23433205">Deliverance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia'>rudbeckia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Henrupe ficlets [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Silence (2016), The Revenant (2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adam Driver/Domhnall Gleason Character Combinations, M/M, Time Travel, henrupe, kylux adjacent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:06:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,304</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23433205</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Francisco Garupe expects to find in the bamboo forest is a chapel, but if God has provided, he will not refuse to pray for forgiveness for the lewd visions of an angel that have been tempting him nightly.</p><p>The last thing Andrew Henry wants is to fall asleep in the family pew while the pastor delivers his sermon. But he lets his mind wander to the dreams of a tall, dark man who has visited him nightly and shows him love like nothing else he has experienced.</p><p>The last thing either of them expects is for the other to be real.</p><p>For Kylux Adjacents Month day 1: time travel</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Francisco Garupe/Andrew Henry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Henrupe ficlets [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1689181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Into the Adjacentverse: Kylux Adjacents Month 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Deliverance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Brother Francisco Garupe, knees and back aching from the lengthy prayers of a penitent soul, creaked and groaned to his feet.</p><p>The small chapel had been a surprise find nestled in a bamboo forest in a land where to be caught spreading the Word of God would make a martyr of him. But ask and ye shall receive, he had thought to himself as he passed through the portal made from living bamboo, weaving and twisting together as it grew. Seek and ye shall find, he murmured as he sank to his knees on the dirt floor in front of an altar formed from a flat topped, rough boulder. Knock and the door shall be opened, he had said aloud as his gaze alighted on the lashed-together bamboo cross with the vaguely man-shaped figure tied to it with twine.</p><p>And Brother Garupe had reason to seek penance. Was it a sin, he wanted to ask God, if it had merely been a dream?</p><p>The man in his dream was beautiful. Not in the way—not <em>just</em> in the way—that all of God’s creations were beautiful. Not in the ordinary way that his reverend brothers were beautiful or the sky was beautiful or even the rains that made him slip in the mud were beautiful. But the beautiful way the man in his vision, radiant as an angel come down from heaven, had kissed him and touched him, had known him as well as he had ever been able to know himself.</p><p>No. Garupe pushed the image of the man’s face and the feel of soft lips on his from his mind. He was being tempted. Tested. He would not yield to Satan. He would ask God for deliverance from this nightly torment. Ask and it will be given.</p><p>And so he had prayed until his knees numbed and his hips cramped and his back threatened never to straighten again. Until he could not remain on his knees for another second longer, and then for some uncountable time beyond.</p><p>A shift in the light, what little of it there was to break into the dark browns and greens of the bamboo chapel, had pulled Garupe out of his prayers and he stood frowning at the roof where pale gold filtered through the gaps and puddled on the floor.</p><p>“Was I here all night?” he said, raising his eyes to ask the figure on the bamboo cross. But the figure, and the cross that bore it, were gone. Garupe gave a cry of alarm and looked all around. There was no sign of the woven bamboo. No roof above his head. No flat stone to serve as altar.</p><p>In their place was a low sun climbing the sky, a breeze carrying the scent of fresh pine, and a sharp sting of frost.</p><p>=====</p><p>Andrew Henry shivered in the family pew and wished to be elsewhere. The pastor droned while the congregation shuffled and coughed and waited for this pause in their week to be over. Henry let his mind wander to the recurring dream he’d enjoyed lately, in which he—miraculously young again—would meet over and over the same tall, lean, dark-haired, serious-looking man whose face would blossom into a smile and who would bring him such sweet joy.</p><p>He shook off his daydream and focused on the predictable ups and downs of the pastor’s voice. This was not the time or place for lewd thoughts. But he could not help himself from wishing his dark, fragile beauty was real and waiting for him somewhere between this ungodly hour and sunset. He kept half an ear on the sermon and when the pastor announced <em>let us pray</em> he slipped to his knees and closed his eyes.</p><p>When he opened them again, he was alone.</p><p>“Could’ve roused me,” he groused to nobody at all, then he looked around, frowning. The chapel with its wooden alter and white tablecloth, the ornate lectern from which the pastor delivered his morose lesson twice on Sundays, the hard wooden pews and plain white walls were gone.</p><p>In their place was a low sun climbing the sky, a breeze carrying the scent of fresh pine, and a sharp sting of frost.</p><p>Andrew got to his feet. He looked around, alert for danger, and realised that he was standing where the chapel ought to be. Over there was his old cabin, long since demolished to make way for better, smoke curling from its chimney. On his other side, the forest stood in proud defiance of the axe and saw that Henry knew had brought down those mighty trunks and turned them into the building he had just been inside.</p><p>And there, in the shadows at the edge of the forest, was a man kneeling as if in prayer then struggling to his feet.</p><p>=====</p><p>“You there!”</p><p>Garupe turned to find the voice, ready to run if his knees would carry him, ready to stand stronger than his wavering faith if that was what God desired of him.<br/>
“Yes, you.” A man walked towards him, out of the pale yellow sunlight, face in blue-tinted shadow. The man stopped, stared, blinked. “My god it’s you!” He came closer. “You’re real! Let me see you.”</p><p>Up closer, an arm’s length away, Garupe saw the man’s red-blond hair and blue-green eyes and pale skin, and knew him too. “And you also are real,” he said, hardly daring to speak. He attempted an explanation in halting phrases. “My vision. I prayed. To be delivered. And here—” Garupe closed his eyes. “Are my prayers answered?” he mumbled, hands reaching for heaven. “Is this the path you have set me on?”</p><p>He shivered and a warm weight settled on his shoulders. Garupe opened his eyes to find a woollen coat draped across his back and the angel from his visions holding it tight across his chest.<br/>
“Dream or not, you’ll die of cold if you stay out here. I have a cabin and a fire.”</p><p>As he said it, he knew it was true. Henry knew he would find the old cabin exactly as he used to keep it: warm and well stocked with provisions. He led his tall, dark love by the hand and, without a further thought, stroked black tresses back from his forehead and kissed him at the threshold.</p><p>Garupe froze then melted in a second. He didn’t know this angel’s name, but he knew his body better than he knew his own. The fire that crackled in the hearth and warmed the single room of the cabin paled beside the fire inside him, and he shook off his borrowed coat, pulling at his angel’s shirt just as his angel pulled at his tunic. There was too much need in him for the gentle kisses and teasing of lips and teeth on bare skin, or for the slicked fingers pushing inside that he knew would make this angel cry out in pleasure. Hands found their way under layers of fabric, grasping and pulling, ripping seams in their haste, and they rocked against each other’s hardness, gasping, lips parted and searching for something like a kiss.</p><p>After the desperate need was satisfied, after the giggles abated and the gentle kisses could be allowed, after more, slower, lovemaking on the furs in front of the hearth, Francisco and Andrew lay together and talked quietly of their dreams.<br/>
“I’m afraid to fall asleep, love,” Andrew confessed. “In case I wake up and the pastor is still talking and it’s still dawn on Sunday and I’m old again and you’re not real. None of this is real.”<br/>
“I’m thankful for what we have, my angel,” Francisco replied after a minute, smiling and closing his eyes. “And I am not afraid.”</p><p>After all, he had prayed for deliverance and God had listened.</p>
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